The moment was a powerful one: The German Pope visits Auschwitz and is visibly moved. He referred to himself as a "son of Germany" and said "I could not fail to come here." Two Cardinals wept openly as Pope Benedict XVI prayed in front of the death wall at Bloc 11. This was Benedict's third trip to Auschwitz, but the significance of visiting this site as Pope obviously weighed heavy on him. His words were moving and voiced the spoken or unspoken feelings of all who ponder the scope of the evil of the Holocaust.
"In a place like this, words fail. In the end, there can only be a dread silence, a silence which is a heartfelt cry to God—Why, Lord, did you remain silent? How could you tolerate all this?"
"Where was God in those days? Why was he silent? How could he permit this endless slaughter, this triumph of evil?"
Benedict is one of the Catholic Church's leading theologians, and no doubt has spend much time over the course of his life as both a Christian and a German pondering the problem of evil and why God allows it.
But one vital question went unasked, one wrong remained unaddressed: Where was the church?
We cannot presume to speak for God, but we can ask why the church remained largely silent, as did most of the rest of the civilized world as the slaughter of millions of Jews took place. There were exceptions-- individual men of faith like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Protestant Pastor, theologian and resister and Maximilian Kolbe, the Polish priest who traded his life for that of a married man at Auschwitz come to mind-- but as a whole the church failed to speak. That silence in the face of unspeakable evil is a sin that the church needs to confess.
Where was God during the Holocaust? Why did He allow the deaths of millions of His chosen people, the apple of His eye? I don't have an answer to that question. That is a mystery.
Where was the church during the Holocaust? Why did the church with it's silence and refusal to confront the Nazis encourage and arguably hasten those deaths? I don't have an answer to that question, either. And that was and is a tragedy.